All posts tagged wii

i never thought i would see the day where i accepted a wii game. as you all know, i don’t consider the wii an actual system. sure, i know the tech specs. sure, i understand the business side of it. then there’s the issues of how it helps people. blah blah blah times infinity.

do i care about any of that horseshit? no.

when little_nerdxo bought her system, i rolled my eyes. i thought it was such a waste of time. she’s been casually winding her way through some zelda title, and occasionally mixes it up with wii resort and some other low-key stuff. all in all, i have been unimpressed.

then she started playing rabbids a few months ago. it had the right amount of ridiculous to it, and it is refreshing to play something like this after the skill, gore and dexterity my other games demand. i got pulled into it, putting in a few hours before fallout: new vegas dropped. then when christmas came, i got her a pile of rabbids games, plus some merch i found while on a trip to montreal.

the other day, captain adventure and i were in blockbuster when i did the unthinkable: i bought a rabbids action figure. now it’s on the shelf with my other little figures – and i am not ashamed of my love. rabbids are everywhere, it seems.

uh oh. holiday season is coming – what have you got for the gamer or gamers in your life? shopping for gamers is the easiest thing in the world. to begin with, every electronic store in the land has a sale of some kind going on. then there’s the game publishers themselves. they have been packaging and bundling all kinds of shit in time for the holidays. and retailers are eating it up.

wii games – you can buy wii games on a broad scale. depending what you want to buy, you’ve pretty much got your pick. i’ve seen tenchu for $4.99 in best buy’s used section, and i think it runs around $10 or $15 new. i got my mom a pinball game for $19.99, and scored need for speed for about $20 as well.

they favouritize xbox 360 here, holy shit! eat lead: the return of matt hazard is going for $4.99. they’ve got rainbow 6 and the saboteur for $9.99. what a bargain, i love those games. you can get alone in the dark for that price too.

crazy enough, the bioshock 2 special edition is going for $20!

of course, you know i have to mention the saboteur. GET IT.

shopping at best buy bonuses? the price watch feature on their web site. plus, if you have the best buy card, you get points to use for further purchases.

ah, michael jackson, we hardly knew ye. i am the first person to be in love with game merch, but at a certain point i draw the line. michael jackson is dead. ok? the man is dead. he has been dead for quite some time. i am not without heart, but let’s put it in perspective: a man died. this is sad. the world lost musical talent. this is also sad. his family lost a member. i am so very sorry for their loss – a death in the family is absolutely devastating. that’s where it ends. there are so many other things in this world to cry over rather than mourn some celebrity.

what really bothers me about this whole mj thing is that the last few years while he was alive, he was a joke. let’s admit it. let’s get the truth out there, people. generations of children attempted the moonwalk. they probably also rendered themselves sterile from all the crotch-grabbing impressions. he was a relic. he was an obligatory reference when you spoke about the 80s and 90s. he admitted to a lot of creepy shit. then there’s the clusterfuck that are the allegations. at the time he died, he was preparing for a comeback.

does any of that overshadow his contributions to the world? no. he did a lot of good and ground-breaking stuff. he advanced us ahead musically by centuries. his impact and his influence will be felt for decades. he set a ton of records that have yet to be broken.

ultimately, whatever he did do; whatever he didn’t do – it’s over. let him rest in peace, or whatever. this is a blog about video games, not a courtroom.

i have to say, i am disgusted with the new ‘michael jackson experience’ game. oh you haven’t heard? yeah that shit is real, son. you get to reproduce the king of pop’s signature moves in your fucking living room. what, in the name of all that is holy, are we DOING? why are we making a GAME about a dead celebrity? does society have no shame?!

then there’s the ambiguity of the game itself – there are so many things that title suggests! are we talking and adult and children ‘sharing-a-bed-while-christ-knows-what-goes-on-under-the-covers’ michael jackson? or are we talking ‘i’m-so-rich-i-bought-jesus’ michael jackson? naturally, it’s probably the least offensive version of the man.

what truly offends me, aside from the monetization of death, is that the game comes complete with sequined glove. fuck me sideways on a trapeze – is this actually happening? are we providing accessories to a game about a dead man?

we’d all be up in arms if wikileaks sent out a cable detailing that james dean actually had a cause and actually was faking his celebrated sense of ennui. or if sega made ‘heath ledger: a knight’s tale’ experience. don’t act like this shit won’t happen! what’s next? elvis rockband?! kurt cobain’s wireless guitar?!

i better shut up. somewhere, a game company executive is jotting down careful notes.

oh rabbids. you’re just so ridiculous that i can’t help but enjoy you.

most of you have likely already read the rabbids: go home quasi-review i wrote a while back. the wii is also a fan of this franchise, with other titles under its belt for both the wii and the nintendo ds.

however, the game has its own special controller: the plunger gun. it’s very cheesy, and available from eb games for $24.99.

i have been foiled by england AGAIN. not that i am a huge wii supporter, but i hate it when one country gets something and another doesn’t. you know? like do i have time to fuck off to japan and pick up some super limited edition console? hell no. can i jet off to england and pick up this limited edition wii? of course not. i can’t possibly find the time to do such things. or leave the babies. little_nerdxo maybe, but she refuses to handle live crickets for the geckos, and that is the only food that those innocent children eat. so as you can see, i am at an impasse.

many of you probably remember when i practically had to be medicated when it turned out i couldn’t get the special edition of alone in the dark: inferno. sure, i could get it from ebay uk, but between the hassle, general unreliability of couriers, etc, i decided not to get it. there has been an ache in my heart ever since.

BAH. as part of nintendo’s big anniversary, they are releasing a red wii in england. and japan. here’s a snippet of what we across the pond are missing out on:

Nintendo DSi XL Special Edition Pack available across Europe from 22nd October 2010 which includes a red Nintendo DSi XL branded with character icons and a copy of New Super Mario Bros.

On 29th October 2010 the New Super Mario Bros. Wii Pack will launch across Europe including a red Wii, a red Wii Remote Plus, a red Nunchuk and three games. As well as New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Wii Sports, the bundle will also include the original edition of Donkey Kong pre-installed on the Wii, in homage to Mario’s first ever appearance.

UPDATE: someone from eb games wrote in and let me know that we will be getting it here after all!! head over to your local eb games and pre-order it. it releases on november 7 of this year.

to begin with, he never names actually weird games. fat princess? stuff some bitch’s mouth full of cake…to make her fat… so she couldn’t escape? yeah that was some weird shit right there. then there’s the micheal jackson moonwalker game for genesis. there there was the one for wii, ‘the super pii pii brothers’. as the more astute among you probably gathered, this is a game about rewarding children for peeing on things.

and since we’ve pretty much made our point, we won’t even think about touching the topic of japanese hentai games.

nope, this douche lists none of these as ‘weird’ games. anyway, from the minds at cnn, here’s what they consider ‘weird games’. if you own any of them, you should now be advised that you are subverting someone, somewhere.

well, christmas is just around the corner. i can tell you this with 100% conviction, since i started getting excited for this christmas around boxing day of last year.

i get so damn excited for christmas in general. i buy shit all during the year, when sales are going on. then i wrap it all and give it away, to friends and family. sometimes total strangers too. what i really like doing is buying something someone quietly mentions, because the look on their face on christmas morning is utterly priceless.

for the last year or so, my mom has been flirting… with the wii. this is so weird, since when we were kids, my mom hated us playing video games. i’m so familiar with her technology-hating ways that i can tell you this with all confidence, since my mom is the only person on the planet who doesn’t read this blog.

i’ll say a rare, positive point for the wii: it’s reached her in ways no other console has been able to.

it was a bit sneaky, to start. her friends began to use it, mainly for the wii fit aspect of things. she casually mused that she’d like one, but we all thought she was joking. she’s a tiny woman who doesn’t need to get any tinier. then some kids she she works with played mario kart. momma was a bit more apprehensive, since, according to her, she’s ‘barely mastered atari’, but she was a bit more serious when she said she wanted one. no one took her seriously, since she still had my dad check her email for her and no one wanted to introduce something like the wii into the world of a technophobe.

anyway, little_nerdxo bought hers a while ago, and one weekend when momma was staying over, little_nerdxo convinced her to play bowling. my mom thought this thing was the best thing ever, and gave little_nerdxo a big run for her money.

momma sighed and said maybe if she was a good girl this year, maybe santa’d bring it, since obviously every hint to my dad fell on deaf ears.

‘we thought you were joking!’ was the reaction of little_nerdxo and i.

‘joking?’ said my mom. ‘why would i joke? this is so much fun!’

i decided to make it so – she’d be thrilled.

however, i encountered a huge stumbling block. i think wii is a waste of time, so i don’t pay attention to games. and unless it’s got either zelda or some hot swashbuckling action, little_nerdxo doesn’t play it.

so far, i’ve got the price is right and virtua tennis, but what kind of wii games for mom are out there? a google search on such a topic is useless. wii fit isn’t a great choice – it’s half the price of the damn console.

this brings me to the strongest wii selling point of all: it comes with wii resort. that and an accessories pack and i’m pretty much set. i know i won’t be, but it’s nice to know that nintendo made a strong effort in that department.